Steven C. Harvey - Old Age

According to Picasso painting is “a means of attack and defense”. The drawings of Steven Harvey’s series “Old Age” are attacks on an enemy foisted upon us in a cruel and mocking way. This enemy is none other than senescence – a disease somehow “applied” to human flesh as something inevitable and irreversible.

Monstrous distortion is explored in the drawings in order to suggest that ageing is separate from the person and he / she is merely a victim. The brutal deformations also satirize the destruction insisted upon by the inscrutable force of Mother Nature. The individuals face their end comforted only by a few dubious props: the Bible, a cross, a pair of glasses, a book of crossword puzzles, etc.

In spite of their apparent cruelty, Harvey’s drawings have a particular beauty and sensitivity. The works themselves, as much as the characters that they portray, seem to belong to a different era – as if they were exhumed from the drawer of a deserted hospital.